Venice launched its 5-euro (CA$7.30) entry ticket for day tourists on Thursday morning, a device intended to stem overtourism, but which has sparked protests from a number of residents refusing to see their city become a museum “.
For this world first, the city listed as a UNESCO heritage site sold some 13,000 tickets, the town hall told AFP at the end of the morning, specifying that this figure is “constantly evolving”, and all the more that no cap has been set on the number of tickets available.
These tickets, which are in the form of QR codes sold online or on site, must be presented to controllers stationed in particular on the station square, the main access to the City of the Doges, where the situation was fluid on Thursday, a public holiday. in Italy.
By forcing day tourists to pay five euros to wander along its famous canals, Venice hopes to dissuade some of them from coming on busy days.
“I think it’s good because it will perhaps slow down the tourist numbers in Venice,” comments Sylvain Pélerin, a French tourist who has been coming there regularly for 50 years, for AFP, proudly showing off his ticket.
In front of Santa Lucia station, the main point of entry into the city, a ticket office has been set up from scratch to help tourists without this new access.
“An experiment”
Venice thus becomes the first tourist city in the world to impose an entrance fee like an amusement park, while movements hostile to overtourism are multiplying, particularly in Spain, pushing the authorities to act to reconcile the well-being of residents with a crucial economic sector.
For Tourism Deputy Simone Venturini, it is “above all a matter of discouraging local tourism for residents of the Veneto region who can visit Venice whenever they want”.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro himself admitted at the beginning of April that “this is an experiment”, which will undoubtedly be closely followed by other major tourist cities around the world.
Its town, one of the most visited in the world, has already banned giant cruise ships from its historic center, whose swarms of passengers will also have to show their credentials.
At peak attendance, 100,000 tourists sleep in Venice, in addition to tens of thousands of daily visitors. Compare to the approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the city center, which continues to depopulate.
At this stage, however, the experiment remains very limited in scope: for 2024, only 29 busy days are affected by this new tax, which will be applied almost every weekend from May to July.
Many exemptions
This tax also only targets daily tourists entering the old town between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. local time. They can download their QR code on the dedicated site, available in English, Spanish, French and German, in addition to Italian.
A fine of 50 to 300 euros (CA$73 to CA$440) is planned to punish tourists who try to slip through the cracks, even if local authorities have said they want to favor persuasion over repression.
Tourists sleeping at least one night on site are exempt and receive a free QR code of their accommodation. Many other exemptions are planned: under 14s, students, etc. On Thursday, around 90,000 people had benefited from this at midday, according to the town hall.
But this new measure is not unanimous among Venetians, some seeing it as an attack on freedom of movement and a further step towards the museumification of their city.
“We are not a museum or a nature reserve, but a city, we should not pay” to access it, protests Marina Dodino, a retired fifty-year-old who is part of a local residents’ association, ARCI Venezia.
A demonstration at the end of the morning not far from the station brought together some 300 people in a good-natured atmosphere, who marched behind a large banner saying “No to the ticket! Yes to housing and services for all.”
This ticket is “the apotheosis of the museification of Venice […] We are in a city where Airbnbs monopolize all the accommodation, where the mayor could regulate tourist rentals but does not do so,” laments Federica Toninello, 32, spokesperson for a local association, for AFP.
“If we want to solve the tourism problem, we have to start with the housing problem,” she concludes.